September 10, 2018

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By Lynda Kiernan, GAI Media

“If you have a good store of rice, you have courage; If you have no stock (of rice), you have no prestige.”
~ Chinese proverb

When thinking of the world’s grain production, the mind often immediately jumps to consider how that year’s corn and soybean crops are progressing. However, although corn is the most-grown grain crop in the world, the majority of that production is siphoned toward uses other than direct human consumption. It is rice that is the most critical crop for human consumption, with more than 480 million tons produced annually to provide more than half the world’s population¹ with their main staple food.

The meaningful role that rice plays in the human diet is nowhere more prevalent than in Asia. It is so integrated in the diets and culture of the people, that in China, the word for ‘rice’ is the same as the word for ‘food’, and a typical greeting in place of “How are you?”, is translated as “Have you eaten your rice today?”, to which the responder is always expected to say “Yes”.

Worldwide, rice production for the 2018/19 season is forecast to break a new record², reaching 162 million hectares (400 million acres), according to the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS). Increases in acreage are expected to happen in Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, the U.S., Vietnam, and the Philippines; while Thailand is expected to export 11 million tons of rice in 2019 after years of only marginally participating in global trade. Of the countries expected to see greater acreage outside of the U.S., Madagascar will increase its acreage the most, planting 18.8 percent more rice year-on-year, while Bangladesh is expected to see production increase by 6.3 percent to reach total output of 34.7 million tons, according to the USDA’s World Agricultural Outlook Board.

Despite expanding acreage and record-breaking global output expectations for this coming season, scientists published findings earlier this year that give pause and raise concern about the ability of future rice production being able to keep pace with growing global populations and increasing demand.

Although volume may remain stable, the nutritious value and quality of rice will likely suffer in coming years due to greenhouse gas emissions, according to a major study³ published in May 2018 in the journal Science Advances.

Researchers in China and Japan discovered that levels of protein, iron, and zinc all declined significantly in growing conditions with CO2 levels that mimic concentrations that are expected to be reached in the coming 50 years. These findings have prompted scientists to warn that critical health crises could be on the horizon for billions of people, especially those in poorer nations.

Given mankind’s high dependence on this single grain, along with warnings that climate change could deeply affect its nutrition profile, and the loss of arable farmland to encroaching urbanization and pollution, it falls to technological advances to ensure a healthy future for rice, and therefore, humans.

CRISPR:

CRISPR, or CRISPR Cas9, stands for “clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”⁴. It is a relatively new, yet powerful gene editing technique that enables scientists to alter sequences of crop DNA for a desired effect or outcome without the integration of genes from outside species or varieties.

Using this cutting-edge technology, a joint team of scientists from Purdue University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a variety of rice that yields between 25 and 31 percent more grain than traditional strains.

Led by Jian-Kang Zhu, a professor at the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Purdue and director of the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the team was able to genetically edit rice’s DNA code allowing for the variety to retain its stress tolerance abilities, while reducing growth inhibition — indicating the possibility of altering common varieties of rice grown by farmers around the world today for significantly higher yields.

“You couldn’t do targeted mutations like that with traditional plant breeding,” said Ray A. Bressen, professor at the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture who was a member of the scientific team working on the project. “You’d do random mutations and try to screen out the ones you don’t want. It would have taken millions of plants. Basically, it’s not feasible. This is a real accomplishment that could not have been done without CRISPR.”

Drones

As Japan’s population ages, and their farmers with it, drones are playing an increasingly forward role in the country’s rice production. Labor shortages and a lack of in-place succession plans have seen the country’s aging growers work smarter, not harder.

Unmanned drones have been required to be registered in Japan since 2015, and as of February of this year, there were 673 – three times more than the number registered only 11 months earlier, reports The Japan Times.⁵

This technology is not only being used for crop observation, but for a range of applications including the spreading of seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers, as well as the mitigation of crop damage done by birds and animals, and the monitoring of irrigation systems.

Japan Inc. is in the process of developing and commercializing its YMR-01, a drone which, instead of the usual six blades, has eight — four single axial rotors and two vertical coaxial rotors designed to generate a downward air current to direct a sprayed input to the ground for a targeted application, unlike helicopters, which currently spray approximately 40 percent of the country’s rice paddies.⁶

Aside from offering a more targeted approach, drones represent a significant cost savings to farmers who traditionally cannot afford the 12 million yen it costs to buy an unmanned helicopter, let alone have the ability to operate it. Furthermore, unmanned helicopters are unable to operate in the mountainous regions of the country which are home to 30 percent of its rice production. Farmers in these areas who traditionally have had to complete all input applications by hand, will now be able to treat a hectare of paddy in 10 minutes compared to hours.

Japan’s rice farmers are also using drones modified with a low-hanging, chemical-free bug zapper attachment to fight pests. Flying the drone low over the paddy, the attachment is able to eliminate more than half of the nocturnal pests that cause crop damage, especially the white-backed plant-hopper.

With organic production becoming increasingly common, drones also are playing a role in eliminating the need for chemical inputs by employing multi-spectrum cameras to identify areas of concern that can then be addressed by hand. It is also hoped that in the future, drones will be able to measure the height of a growing crop from above, and be able to give farmers a view of their rice’s root structure.

Going Vertical

The idea of growing rice in Asia using a vertical production system has actually been acknowledged as a possibility for years. Knowing that by 2025 4 billion people will rely on rice as a mainstay of their daily diet, Jin Ho Kim proposed growing rice in aeroponic vertical farms in the Philippines in 2013.⁷

By 2015, a farmer named Saleh Al Mansouri in the UAE displayed his hydroponically grown rice at the Liwa Dates Festival. At the time, reports that Adam Price, a rice specialist at the Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, stated that he was not aware of there being any large scale hydroponic production systems for rice in the world, but that there were no valid reasons why the crop could not be cultivated under such conditions.

Today, the untapped potential that vertical farming and the technologies associated with it have to transform society are driving the Asia Pacific vertical farming market to an expected CAGR of 21.1 percent between 2017 and 2023.⁸ But can rice as a crop play a part in this growth?

A feasibility study⁹ conducted by a scientific team from the Center for Environment, Health, and Field Sciences at Chiba University in Japan, and the Japan Science and Technology Agency states that rice grown in traditional paddies takes 120 days from planting to harvest, between spring and autumn, limiting a rice harvest to a single yearly event. However, in an indoor setting using both sunlight and supplemental light, the team concluded that rice could be successfully harvested two to three times per year. In systems using fully artificial light, the time between sowing and harvest would be reduced to 90 days, indicating that four harvests could occur in a single year, with production that is approximately five times greater than paddy-grown rice.

Due to its extended growing season, the team said that traditional rice may not be the best option for vertical farms, however, this does not stand true for transgenic varieties with high specific protein content to offset the cost of production.

Bringing Digital to Smallholders

Eighty percent of the farming done throughout Asia and Africa is done by smallholder farmers cultivating 10 hectares or less, according to the UN FAO.¹⁰ However, this demographic often does not have access to the technologies that can result in true positive growth of agricultural output.

Sarmap, a Swiss agtech company, has launched a digital data monitoring platform designed to mitigate risk for rice growing smallholders.

Initially focused on Asian centers of production in Cambodia, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, the company’s goal is to see an increase in rice production due to better access to information by those producing it. Using a combination of remote and on-site sensing and climatic data, Sarmap can provide smallholders with statistics indicating the status of a rice crop over the course of a growing season, and yield and loss forecasts, which over time can lead to better land management decisions.

From smallholders across Southeast Asia beginning to discover the benefits of data, to farmers integrating drones into their day-to-day production systems in Japan, to scientists using CRISPR Cas9 techniques in laboratories across developed nations, multiple channels are being explored that can help ensure a more than adequate supply of rice in our collective future. These actions being taken by a range of farmers, scientists, and engineers reflect the wisdom of the Chinese proverb, “Talk doesn’t cook rice”. And it is through their insights and actions that investors can find the opportunities for return on investment in the technologies that will keep the majority of the world fed for decades to come.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. She can be reached at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.

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^{9. Mauro, Toru, and Michiko Takagaki, Wataru Yamoi, and Geng Zhang. “Feasibility Study of Rice Growth in Plant Factories.” Omiconline.org. https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/feasibility-study-of-rice-growth-in-plant-factories-jrr.1000119.pdf (accessed August 2, 2018).↩}

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